


Pictures of You

by victoria_p (musesfool)



Series: Dog Days of Summer [16]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Community: dogdaysofsummer, M/M, Marauders' Era, photographer!Remus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-08-16
Updated: 2005-08-16
Packaged: 2018-03-20 06:11:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3639756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musesfool/pseuds/victoria_p





	Pictures of You

_He stretched out his hand desperately as if to snatch only a wisp of air, to save a fragment of the spot that [he] had made lovely for him. But it was all going by too fast now for his blurred eyes and he knew that he had lost that part of it, the freshest and the best, forever._  
~F. Scott Fitzgerald, _The Great Gatsby_

*

Summer is like one big drunken party, Remus thinks, and as the long, lazy days of August wind to a close, he's beginning to feel the onset of the hangover, the stale taste of his own creeping mortality in his mouth when he wakes in the morning, before he brushes his teeth. He wants to stave that off, wants to hold onto summer, to his friends, to _Sirius_ , as long as he can, but it’s slipping through his fingers faster than he ever thought possible.

Sirius lies in the grass, tanned and glowing and solid, and Remus reaches for his camera, clicks off another snapshot, one more attempt to freeze time so he won’t lose it, lose this, as summer and his memory fades.

He's taken dozens of them, hundreds, this summer--James and Sirius, James and Lily, James and Peter; his mum and dad, the Potters, Andromeda and Ted and their little girl, his own parents, looking both careworn and happy as they take time out to enjoy the summer heat, the slow, golden joy of the long days and warm nights.

Sirius raises himself up on his elbows, but instead of grinning and posing for the camera the way he usually does, he scowls, and Remus lowers the camera.

"Thank God," Sirius says. "I was beginning to forget what you looked like without that thing attached to your face."

"I’m trying to--" Remus stops, because he can’t actually put it into words that don’t sound ridiculous. He tries again. "I want to remember everything."

"You think a bunch of photographs in a book is going to help you remember?" Sirius rises from the grass, long and lithe and graceful. He's never gone through an awkward stage. Remus thinks the Blacks must have bred the awkwardness out of themselves centuries ago. He raises the camera again, trying to capture his essential _Sirius_ -ness--the careless flow of his limbs, the louche elegance of his slouch, the way he seems to glide instead of walk, like some kind of creature of fantasy.

"There are some people who won’t let their pictures be taken," Remus says, "because they think the camera steals bits of their souls."

Sirius ignores him, keeps moving closer, so all Remus can see now are patches of supple, golden skin, lightly dusted with dark hair and the occasional freckle. He keeps snapping pictures anyway.

"You think pictures are going to help you remember this?" Sirius says again, but now his voice is a low, rough purr in Remus’s ear, and his body is so close Remus can feel the heat radiating off him, dangerous and seductive, like the star he is named for.

Remus opens his mouth, but the words have dried up--his lips and tongue are parched and wanting as Sirius takes the camera from him and drops it on the grass. He can’t even say, _hey, that’s an expensive camera,_ or _cut it out, Padfoot, my parents could be watching._ He can only drink in Sirius’s kisses, absorb his touches, and let himself drown in his unspoken love.

Sirius is right; these are things no camera could ever capture, no ink and paper could ever record, but over the years, Remus never stops wishing they could.

*


End file.
